Easter Thoughts
(Delivered in Brooklyta, N. Y., April 6. 1890.)
And the £eld of Ephron, which was in Machpelah, which was before Mamre, the field, and the cave which was therein, and all the trees that were in the held, that were in all the borders round about, were made sure unto Abraham.’ Gen. xxiii, 17, 18.
Jlivfji ERE is the first cemetery ever laid out. Machpelah
was its name. It was an arborescent beauty,
(^Jp where the wound of death was bandaged with foliage. Abraham, a rich man, not being able to bribe the King of Terrors, proposes here, as far as possible, to cover up the ravages. He had no doubt previously noticed this region, and now that Sarah his wife had died — that remarkable person who at ninety years of age had born to her the son of Isaac, and who now, after she had reached one hundred and twenty-seven years, had expired — Abraham is negotiating for a family plot for her last slumber. Ephron owned this real estate, and after, in mock sympathy for Abraham, refusing to take anything for it, now sticks on a big price — four hundred shelkels of silver- The cemetery lot is paid for, and the transfer made, in the presence of witnesses in a
MACHPELAH.
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public place, for there were no deeds and no halls of record in those early times. Then in a cavern of limestone rock Abraham put Sarah, and, a few years after, himself followed, and then Isaac and Rebekah, and then Jacob and Leah. Embowered, picturesque and memorable Machpelah! That ^’God’s acre” dedicated by Abraham has been the mother of innumerable mortuary observances. The necropolis of every civilized land has vied with its metropolis.
RESTING PLACES OF THE DEAD.
The most beautiful hills of Europe outside the great cities are covered with obelisk and funeral vase and arched gateways and columns and parterres in honor of the inhumated. The Appian Way of Rome was bordered by sepulchral commemorations. For this purpose Pisa has its arcades of marble sculptured into excellent bas reliefs, and the feature of dear faces that have vanished. Genoa has its terraces cut into tombs; and Constantinople covers with cypress the silent habitations; and Paris has its Pere-Lachaise, on whose heights rest Balzac and David and Marshal Ney and Ctivier and La Place and Mollere, and a mighty group of warriors and poets and painters and musicians. In all foreign nations utmost genius on all sides is expended in the work of interment, mummification and incineration.
Our own country consents to be second to none in respect to the lifeless body. Every city and town and neighborhood of any intelligence or virtue has, not many miles away, its sacred inclosure, where affection has eiiua;?:ed sculptor’s chisel and florist’s spade and artificer ill mctrils. Our own city has vshown its religion, as well
’ ?rt, in ili<:^ mnnrier in which ‘’’r fli^Ql^Y of those who have passed forever away, by its Cypress Hills, and its Evergreens, and its Calvary, and Holy Cross, and Friends’ cemeteries: All the world knows of our Greenwood, with now about two hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants sleeping among the hills that overlook the sea, and by lakes embosomed in an Eden of flowers, our American Westminister Abby, an Acropolis of mortuary architecture,* a Pantheon of mighty ones ascended, elegies in stone, Iliads in marble, whole generations in peace waiting for other generations to join them. No dormitory of breathles sleepers in all the world has so many mighty dead.
Among preachers of the gospel, Bethune and Thomas DeWitt, and Bishop Janes and Tyng, and Abeel the missionary, and Beecher and Buddington, and McClintock and Inskip, and Bangs and Chapin, and Noah Schenck and Samuel Hanson Cox. Among musicians, the renowned Gottschalk and the holy Thomas Hastings. Among philanthropists, Peter Cooper and Isaac T. Hopper, and Lucretia Mott and Isabella Graham, ’ and Henry Bergh, the apostle of mercy to the brute creation. Among the literati, the Carys, Alice and Phoebe; James K. Paulding and John G. Saxe. Among journalists, Bennett and Raymond and Greeley. Among scientists, Ormsby Mitchel, warrior as well as astronomer, and lovingly called by his soldiers *^01d Stars,’’ the Drapers, splendid men, as I well know, one of them my teacher, the other my classmate.
Among inventors, Elias Howe, who through the sewing machine, did more to alleviate the toils of wonianhood than any man that ever lived, and Professor Morse, who gave us magnetic telegraphy; the former doing his work with the needle, the latter with the
TALMAGE^S SERMON.
thunderbolt. Among physicians and surgeons, Joseph C. Hutchinson, and Marion Sims, and Dr. Valentine Mott, with the following epitaph which he ordered cut in honor of the Christian religion: My implicit faith and hope is in a merciful Redeemer, who is the resurrection and the life. Amen and amen/^ This is our American Machpelah, as sacred to us as the Machphelah in Canaan, of which Jacob uttered that pastoral poem in one verse: There they buried Abraham, and Sarah his wife; there they buried Isaac» and Rebekah his wife, and there I buried Leah.’’
At this Easter service I ask and answer what may seem a novel question, but it will be found, before I get through, a practical and useful and tremendous question: What will resurrection day do for the cemeteries? First, I remark, it will be their supernal beautification. At certain seasons it is customary in all lands to strew flowers over the mounds. of the departed. It may have been suggested by the fact that Christ’s tomb was in a garden. And when I say garden I do not mean a garden of these latitudes. The late frosts of spring and the early frosts of autumn are so near each other that there are only a few months of flowers in the field. All the flowers we see to-day had to be petted and coaxed and put under shelter, or they would not have bloomed at all. They are the children of the conservatories. But at this season and through the most of the year the Holy Land is all ablush with floral opulence.
You find all the royal family of flowers there, some that you supposed indigenous to the far north, and others indigenous to the far south — the daisy and hyacinth, crocus and anemone, tulip and water lily, geranium and ranunculus, mignonette and sweet marjoram.
In the college at Beyrout you may see Dr. Posts collection of about eighteen hundred kinds of Holy Land flowers; while among trees are the oaks of frozen climes, and the tamarisk of the tropics, walnut and willow, ivy and hawthorne, ash and elder, pine and sycamore. If such floral and botanical beauties are the wild growths of the fields, think of what a garden must be in Palestine! And in such a garden Jesus Christ slept after, on the soldier,s spear, his last drop of blood had coagulated. And then see how appropriate that all our cemeteries should be floralized and tree shaded. In June, Greenwood is Brooklyn’s garden.
‘’Well, then,’’ you say, ‘’how can you make out that the Resurrection day will beautify the cemeteries? Will it not leave them a plowed up ground? On that day there will be an earthquake, and will not this split the polished Aberdeen granite, as well as the plain slab that can afford but the two words, ‘Our Mary,’ or ‘Our Charley?’” Well, I will tell you how Resurrection day will beautify all the cemeteries. It will be by bringing up the faces that were to us once, and in our memories are to us now, more beautiful than any calla lily, and the forms that are to us more graceful than any willow by the waters. Can you think of anything more beautiful than the reappearance of those from whom we have been parted? I do not care which way the tree falls in the blast of the Judgment hurricane, or if the plowshare that day shall turn under the last rose leaf and the last china aster, if out of the broken sod shall come the bodies of our loved ones not damaged, but irradiated.
/ The idea of the resurection gets easier to understand as I hear the phonograph unroll some voice that talked into it a year ago, just before our friend’s decease. You talmage’s sermons.
turn the wire, and then come forth the very tones, the very song of the person that breathed into it once, but is now departed. If amancan do that, cannot Almighty God, without half trying, return the voice of your departed? And if He can return the voice, why not the lips and the tongue and the throat that fashioned the voice? And if the lips and the tongue and the throat, why not then the brain that suggested the words? And if the brain, why not the nerves, of which the brain is the headquarters? And if He can return the nerves, why not the muscles, which are less ingenious? And if the muscles, why not the bones, that are less wonderful? And if the voice and the brain and the muscles and the bones, why not the entire body? If man can do the phonograph, God can do the resurrection. Will it be the same body that in the last day shall be reanimated? Yes, but infinitely improved.
Our bodies change every seven years, and yet, in one sense, it is the same body. On my wrist and the second finger of my right hand there is a scar. I made that at twelve years of age, when, disgusted at the presence of two warts, I took a red hot iron and burned them off and burned them out. Since then my body has changed at least a half dozen times, but those scars prove it is the same body. And we never lose our indentity. If God can and does sometimes rebuild a man five, six, ten times, in this world, is it mysterious that He can rebuild him once more, and that in the resurrection? If He can do it ten times, I think He can do it eleven times. Then look at the seventeen year locusts. For seventeen years gone, at the end of seventeen years they appear, and by rubbing the hind leg against the wing make that rattle at which all the husbandmen and vine dressers tremble as the insectile host takes up the march of devastation, Resurrection every seventeen years, a wonderful fact!
THE GOSPEL ALGEBRA.
Another consideration makes the idea of resurrection easier. GodmadeAdam. He was not fashioned after any model. There had never been a human organism, and so there was nothing to copy. At the first attemjot God made a perfect man. He made him out of the dust of the earth. If out of ordinary dust of the earth and without a model God could make a perfect man, surely out of the extraordinary dust of the mortal body, and with millions of models, God can make each one of us a perfect being in the resurrection. Surely the last undertaking would not be greater than the first. See the gospel algebra; ordinary dust minus a model equals a perfect man; extraordinary dust and. plus a model equals a ressurrection body. Mysteries about it? Oh, yes; that is one reason why I believe it. It would not be much of a God who could do things only as far as lean understand. Mysteries? Oh, yes; but no more about the resurrection of your body than about its present existence.
I will explain to you the last mystery of the resurrection, and make it as plain to you as that two and two make four, if you will tell me how your mind, which is entirely independent of your body, can act upon your body so that at your will your eyes open, or your foot walks, or your hand is extended. So I find nothing in the Bible statement concerning the resurrection that staggers me for a moment. All doubts clear from my mind. I say that the cemeteries, however beautiful now, will be more beautiful when the bodies of our loved once come up, in the morning of the resurrection, talmage’s sermons.
They will come in improved condition. They will come up rested. The most of them lay down at the last very tired. How often you have heard them say, “I am so tired!” The fact is, it is a tired world. If I should go through this audience, and go round the world, I could not find a person in any style of life ignorant of the sensation of fatigue. I do not believe there are fifty persons in this audience who are not tired. Your head is tired, or your back is tired, or your foot is tired, or your brain is tired, or your nerves are tired. Longjourneying, or business application, or bereavement, or sickness have put on you heavy weights. So the vast majority of those who went out of this world went out fatigued. About the poorest place to rest in, is this world. Its atmosphere, its surroundings, and even its hilarities are exhausting. So God stops our earthly life, and mercifully closes the eyes, and more especially gives quiescence to the lung and heart, that have not had ten minutes’ rest from the first respiration and the first beat.
DRUM BEATS OF THE HEART.
If a drummer boy were compelled in the army to beat his drum for twenty -four hours without stopping, his officer would be court martialed for cruelty. If the drummer boy should be commanded to beat his drum for a week without ceasing, day and night, he would die in attempting it. But under your vestment is a poor heart that began its drum beat for the march of life thirty, or forty, or sixty, or eighty years ago, and it has had no furlough by day or night; and whether in conscious or comatose state, it went right on, for if it had stopped seven seconds your life would have closed. Am your heart will keep going until sometime after
KASTER THOUGHT.
your Spirit has flown, for the ausculator says that after the last expiration of lung and the last throb of pulse, and after the spirit is released, the heart keeps on beating for a time. What a mercy, then, it is that the grave is the place where that wondrous machinery of ventricle and artery can halt!
Under the healthful chemistry of the soil all the wear and tear of nerve and muscle and bone will be subtracted and that bath of good, fresh, clean soil will wash off the last ache, and then some of the same style of dust out of which the body of Adam was constructed may be infused into the resurrection body. How can the bodies of the human race, which have had no replenishment from the dust since the time of Adam in Paradise, get any recuperation from the storehouse from which he was constructed without our going back into the dust? That original, life giving material having been added to the body as it once was, and all the defects left behind, what a body will be the resurrection body! And will not hundreds of thousands of such appearing above the Gowanus heights make Greenwood more beautiful than any June morning after a shower? The dust of the earth being the original material for the fashioning of the first human being, we have to go back to the same place to get a perfect body.
Factories are apt to be rough places, and those who toil in them have their garments grimy and their hands smutched. But who cares for that when they turn out for us beautiful musical instruments or exquisite upholstery? What though the grave is a rough place, it is a resurrection body manufactory, and from it shall come the radiant and resplendent forms of our friends on the brightest morning the world ever saw.
TALMAGE^S SERMONS.
You put into a factory cotton, and it comes out apparal. You put into a factory lumber and lead, and it comes out pianos and organs. And so into the factory of the grave, you put in pneumonias and consumptions and they come out health. You put in groans and they come out hallelujahs. For us, on the final day, the most attractive places will not be the parks or the gardens or the palaces, but the cemeteries.
We are not told in what season that day will come. If it should be winter, those who come up will be more lustripus than the snow that covered them. If in the autumn, those who come up will be more gorgeous than the woods after the frosts have penciled them. If in the spring, the bloom on which they tread will be dull compared with the rubicund of their cheeks. Oh, the perfect resurrection body! Almost everybody has some defective spot in his physical constitution; a dull ear, or a dim eye, or a rheumatic foot, or a neuralgic brow, or a twisted muscle, or a weak side, or an mflamed tonsil, or some point at which the east wind or a season of overwork assaults him. But the resurrection body shall be without one weak spot, and all that the doctors, and nurses, and apothecaries of earth will thereafter have to do, will be to rest without interruption after the broken nights of their earthly existence. Not only will that day be the beautification of well kept cemeteries, but some of the graveyards that have been neglected and been the pasture ground for cattle, and rooting places for swine, will for the first time, have attractiveness given them.
It was a shame that in that place ungrateful generations planted no trees, and twisted no garlands, and sculptured no marble for their Christian ancestory; but on the day of which I speak the resurrected shall make the place of their feet glorious. From under the shadow of the church, where they slumbered among nettles, and mullein stalks, and thistles, and slabs aslant, they shall rise with a glory that shall flash the windows of the village church, and by the bell tower that used to call them to worship, and above the old spire beside which their prayers formerly ascended. What triumphal procession never did for a street, what an oratorio never did for an academy, what an orator never did for a brilliant auditory, what obelisk never did for a king, ressurrection morn will do for all the cemeteries.
HE IS RISEN INDEED.
This Easter tells us that in Christ’s resurrection our resurrection, if we are his, and the resurrection of all the pious dead, is assured, for he was “the first fruits of them that slept,” Renan says he did not rise, but five hundred and eighty witnesses, sixty of them Christ’s enemies, say he did rise, for they saw him after he had risen. If he did not rise, how did sixty armed soldiers let him get away? Surely sixty living soldiers ought to be able to keep one dead man! Blessed be God! He did get away. After his resurrection Mary Magdalene saw him. Cleopas saw him. Ten disciples in an upper room at Jerusalem, saw him. On a mountain the eleven saw him. Five hundred at once saw him. Professor Ernest Renan, who did not see him, will excuse us for taking the testimony of the five hundred and eighty who did see him. Yes, yes; he got away. And that makes me ure that our departed loved ones and we ourselves shall get away. Freed himself from the shackles of clod, he is not going to leave us and ours in the lurch.
There will be no doorknob on the inside of our family taIvMage’s sermons.
sepulcher, for we cannot come out, of ourselves; but there is a door knob on the outside, and that Jesus shall lay hold of, and, opening, will say: “Good morning! You have slept long enough! Arise! Arise! And then whatllutter of wings, and what flashing of rekindled eyes, and what gladsome rushing across the family lot, with cries of ^’Father, is that you?” ^’Mother, is that you?’’ ‘’My darling, is that you?’’ ‘’Howyouall have changed! The cough gone, the croup gone, the consumption gone, the paralysis gone, the weariness gone. Come, let us ascend together! The older ones first, the younger ones next! Quick now, get into line! The skyward procession has alreadj’ started! Steer now by that embankment of cloud for the nearest gate!” And, as we ascend, on one side the earth gets smaller until it is no larger than a mountain, and smaller until it is no larger than a palace, and smaller until it is no larger than a ship, and smaller until it is no larger than a wheel, and smaller until it is no larger than a speck.
Farewell, dissolving earth! But on the other, side, as we rise, heaven at first appears no larger than your hand. And nearer it looks like a chariot, and nearer it looks like a throne, and nearer it looks like a star, and nearer it looks like a sun, and nearer it looks like a universe. Hail, scepters that shall always wave! Hail, anthems that shall always roll! Hail, companionships never again 4:0 part! That is what resurrection day will do for all the cemeteries and graveyards from the Machpelah that was opened by Father Abraham in Hebron to the Machpelah yesterday consecrated. And that makes Lady Huntington’s immortal rhythm most apposite:
When thou, my righteous judge, shall come
To take thy ransomed people home,
Shall I among them stand?
Shall such a worthless worm as I,
Who sometimes am afraijd to die,
Be found at thy right hand?
Among thy saints let me be found,
When’er th’ archangel’s trump shall sound;
To see’thy spiiling face;
Then loudest of the throng I’ll sing,
While heaven’s resounding arches ring,
With shouts of sovereign grace.